September 24, 2007

The Gold Quran

I found this website interesting. It shows one of the earliest written texts of the Quran.

The Koran imaged here is written in the earliest Arabic script known as kufic, after the Iraqi town of Kufa, a major center of Islamic culture during the 8th-9th century. The text of the Koran was written entirely in gold leaf around the year 800. The volume on this site is only part of a complete Koran and consists of the first 18 suras (chapters) bound in a modern (possibly 18th-century) binding. It is not known when these 18 suras were separated from the remaining ones which complete the text and are housed in the Nuruosmaniye Library in Istanbul. In 1999, the Johns Hopkins University returned this volume of the Koran to the Republic of Turkey to be reunited with the second volume.

Eighteen chapters of a ninth-century gold Koran have been returned to the Republic of Turkey. Valued at $1.9 to 2.9 million, the chapters had been removed from Istanbul sometime after an inventory in 1756, while the remaining chapters were left behind. They were acquired by Johns Hopkins in a 1942 bequest. Turkish officials asked that the chapters be returned after they were displayed at Baltimore’s Walters University Art Gallery in 1997. Written in gold-leaf Arabic letters, the Koran was probably made in north Africa or Iraq and is the only known complete example of its kind. The chapters are to be housed with the rest of the volume in Istanbul’s Nuruosmaniye Library.

Meanwhile, a collection of 133 artifacts from the Hittite through Byzantine periods, looted from Turkish archaeological sites and smuggled into the U.S. in 1997, has also been returned. The artifacts, valued at $4,000 to $5,000 by U.S. Customs, included glass vials and flasks; bronze, silver, and stone jewelry; small sculptures; buttons; seals; crucifixes; and an oil lamp. A California art dealer has pled guilty in the case, and arrests have been made in Turkey.